India salve on Vietnam scars - ASI to help restore temples damaged in US bombing

New Delh - Amaar naam, tomaar naam, Vietnam, Vietnam. After years of
sloganeering, India is finally getting a chance to put its mortar where its
mouth was.

New Delhi will help conserve a portion of My Son sanctuary, a world heritage
site in Vietnam that has one of the largest collections of Hindu temples and
monuments, the oldest dating back to the 4th century AD, outside the
subcontinent.

The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) will be restoring the damage done
by a weeklong US carpet-bombing during the Vietnam War, when the slogan “Amaar
naam, tomaar naam (my name, your name)” was coined in Bengal to show solidarity
with the Vietnamese.

Bengal politicians’ other “war effort” had been to try and embarrass the
Americans by renaming Calcutta’s Harrington Street, where the US consulate is
located, as Ho Chi Minh Sarani after the Vietnamese war leader.

Four decades have since passed but My Son’s 70-odd monuments still wear
their war wounds from the B52 bomber raids of August 1969. The surrounding area
is considered dangerous even now because of undetected landmines, another
legacy of the war.

“A team of ASI officials has visited the site and is finalising the
preliminary report,” said ASI additional director-general B.R. Mani.

One reason the sanctuary was awarded world heritage status was that Unesco
recognised it as an exceptional example of cultural interchange. It is the
place where subcontinental Hindu architecture was introduced into Southeast
Asia over 1,600 years ago and evolved for over 10 centuries, while
intermingling with Buddhist culture.

For several years now, teams from Italy and France have been working on the
site, dotted with red-brick shrines and other structures, mainly built in the
Indian architectural style of Shikhara (tapering towers).

“Our (Indian) help has been sought because we have expertise in Indian
architecture,” said an official of the ASI, which has undertaken the project
under the foreign ministry’s directions. “We will be working on only one
portion of the sanctuary.”

The restoration is expected to be a part of next week’s scheduled bilateral
talks with the Vietnamese President in India.

The temples at the sanctuary, set in a valley surrounded by high mountains,
were built by the Cham rulers, who established the Champa kingdom towards the
end of the 2nd century AD and soon came under the influence of Hinduism.

Most of the shrines are Shiva temples though some are dedicated to other
deities. The earliest is dedicated to Bhadresvara (Shiva), a name that derives
from that of the Cham king Bhadravarman.

“The peak construction time was between the 8th and 10th centuries, when
some of the most magnificent monuments came up here,” the ASI official said.
Later, the area came under the influence of Mahayana Buddhism too.

For conservationists, the challenge is that much of the construction
technique of the Cham dynasty’s workers is still a mystery. Even the decorative
carvings on the temples were cut directly onto the bricks themselves, rather
than onto sandstone slabs inserted into the brick walls.

From AD 1190 to 1220, the Champa kingdom was occupied by the Khmers. From
the 13th century, it slowly declined and was absorbed by the growing power of
Dai Viet. It ceased to exist as a kingdom in the later 15th century, when
worship ceased at My Son.

The site was rediscovered and introduced to the modern world in 1898 by a
French scholar, M.C. Paris.